They gone and done it. They killed off the mainish character they were promising, and somehow they managed to make it someone that most people are only going to mourn for the loss of a cute guy. Heck, I’ve noticed a huge amount of anti-Boone sentiment since the series started, so there’s probably joy in a lot of Mudvilles now.

But that’s not what this post is about.

I’m for calling Claire’s baby D’Argo until we find out what she names him. D’Argo Boone Charles Littleton, because you have to cover all your bases.

But that’s not what this post is about.

I’m all about the preview at the moment, because I think that for once, they might have been showing some real truth. If you’re a believer in the Shore Leave Theory, that is.

We see Locke get shot. This could be a flashback to the long-awaited How I Got My Wheelchair explanation, but I don’t buy that since he had present-day hair (or lack thereof) and it seems more in line with the head-hitting tendencies of the writers to have him get old after whatever-it-is takes him down. I think Continue reading →

I read the TV Guide poll on “What’s really happening on Lost?” a while ago and even then was sorely disappointed with their answers. It was obvious that the survey staff had chosen the responses themselves and then had participants choose, because people in the fandom have come up with much better explanations than “they’re all dead.”

So today, while looking for translations of the Korean parts of the script, I happened upon a bunch of message boards with posts containing riffs on the “Shore Leave” theory. And they got me thinking about not just polar bears, but also a lot of other things that don’t fit on the island. As I see it, the things we need to explain are: the survival of the castaways, the existence of Ethan and Company, the locked door, the power source, what made the French expedition crazy and/or dead, and the monster (which I call the Beastie). Here we go, and comment me if I don’t make sense….. Continue reading →

As a linguist, I’m highly disappointed in the castaways of “Lost.” In the time they’ve been on the island, not one of them has truly attempted to either 1) learn a few words of Korean or 2) see if Sun or Jin is open to being taught a few words of English. Instead, in painfully true-to-life (but rapidly aging) fashion, they’re relying on the highly effective (*snort*) method of talking really loudly and slowly. Mostly we see this with the English speakers, but last episode it was great to see Jin doing it right back in Korean.

What really disappointed me was that, from what I’ve seen, last week’s episode should have included less crosstalking comedy and more communication, simply due to Jin’s counterpart being Hurley. He’s not a linguist as far as we know, but he is the Guy Who Gets Things Done ™. He has a hefty dose of common sense and “aha” ability, and the wherewithal to act on what he perceives. If any of the major characters were to try to compile some sort of papyrus dictionary, it would be him. And considering that the need to communicate with the Koreans has actually been articulated, unlike the need to take a census or build a golf course, if this weren’t TV, by now he’d probably have either been doing it or found someone else to. Admittedly, though, if he had, we may not have gotten to see that, on the island, the Talk Really Loud method of intercultural communication is universal. Which is comforting, in an odd way: we may not understand each other, but there’s at least something in our communication mechanisms that’s the same.